Medieval Arab writers stereotyped Byzantine women as promiscuous/immoral - yet also desirable. They are stereotyped in varying ways as “the most shameless,” adulterous, beautiful, uncovered, uncircumcised, & being uncontrolled - but also as attractive and beautiful (a thread)
Byzantine women were called Rumiyya, the feminine linguistic form of Rumi which was their way of saying Roman. The medieval Arab writers stereotyped Byzantine women as seducing/untrustworthy. Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs by Nadia Maria El Cheikh details these views
“Sa’id al Andalusi states that king of Rum(Roman Empire) is called the king of men because among a human beings, his subjects have the most beautiful faces, the most well-proportioned physiques…This characteristic, beauty, is associated with Byzantine women in particular.”
The women of Byzantium were described in some cases as being light-skinned and blonde with blue eyes and straight hair. This is interesting considering that is not the average look of Mediterranean people. Perhaps the women that looked like this just stood out to Arab observers
In one source a warrior was asked if wanted to go fight the Romans and he said: “Will you allow me to stay behind so as not to be tempted, for everyone knows I am deeply attracted to women, and I am afraid that if I see the Byzantine women, I shall not be able to control myself.”
This shows a kind of fetishization, as if they were sirens luring the virtuous men. Even the story of Harun Al-Rashid features a Byzantine woman he fell in love with, building her a castle on the Euphrates to live in. In the tale her beauty is stressed. But not all were fans…
Al-Jahiz wrote with disdain for Byzantine women he called “the most shameless women in the world…” He thought that this stereotyped immodest behavior was because “the uncircumcised woman finds pleasure, which the circumcised woman does not”
The Arabs also strongly criticized the Byzantine use of eunuchs, (castrated boys). Al-Jahiz wrote: “The Byzantines are the originators of this custom, which contradicts the spirit of kindness and mercy.” But for women, female circumcision seems important to control them…
Abd Al-Jabbar wrote about Roman women as well: “adultery is commonplace in the cities and marketplaces of Byzantium. If a woman has no husband, chooses not to marry, and prefers adultery, she is free to do what she pleases. There are, he claims, many markets for prostitutes…”
“married women are usually chaste; it is the unmarried who are adulteresses…they often start fornicating while living in their parents home…Byzantine women aren’t veiled even when married & they pass the people in the market with heads/faces uncovered, showing all their beauty”
The Arab writers were showing bias and stereotyping: “In Byzantium, women were expected to be retiring, shy, modest, & devoted to their families & religious observances. The upbringing of women took place in the gynaecum, the part of the house for women, in virtual seclusion."
"Although Byzantine historical sources show that strict conventions did not stop illicit contact between the sexes, the behavior of most women in Byzantium was a far cry from the depictions that appear in the Arabic sources."
El Cheikh elaborates further on Al-Jabbar's claims: "There are, he claims, many markets for prositutes, who posesses their own shops and sit in their doorways, uncovered and conspicuous. If one of them gives birth to a child, she can carry him to the patriarch, bishop, or priest”
… “and say ‘I am giving this child so that he may become a servant of Christ. Inevitably the response is that she is a "pure and blessed saint’…” Jabbar is implying they are actually just adulterous and immoral, and pretending to virtuous mothers
Nadia Maria El Cheikh concludes that “the entire body of writing on Byzantine women seems to reflect fears of uncontrolled sexual activity…the aforementioned accounts seem to be projections of the perceptions, feelings, attitudes, and judgment of Arab Muslim men.”
“…There are no firsthand, credible, or dependable sources about Byzantine women in our sources. While the one quality that our sources never deny is the beauty of Byzantine women, the image that they create in describing these women is anything but beautiful.”
It seems like a literary way to “reject the moral and ethical system of the Byzantines as inferior, reinforcing their own adherence to what hey as a superior moral system”….even if much of what they thought about was not even true or understood with any experience by the author
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.